Cleo — January 2006
A Diamond in ZIP Code 33604
I asked her if she received any recognition or support from our community. She looked at me like she needed clarification. I named several of our most visible and prominent community-based organizations. She indicated that none of the ones I named had been in contact with her. She credits her single parent, Upward Bound, and her personal drive, for the most part, for her accomplishments to date.
Her prom is coming up on April 22. She needs to start working to save money for that and other expenses approaching in the coming months of her senior year. Her plan was to begin work in the next week or two at a major grocery store near her home in ZIP Code 33604. I told her to put that plan on hold.
Central Park Village Youth Services, Inc., a local 501 c 3 organization, is exploring how it can raise the funds to provide her a stipend as a MIMS Institute Fellow. She has ample ability to do the type of research and critical thinking that the MIMS Institute seeks. A timely project would be for her to gather some data from churches in her ZIP Code and adjacent ZIP Codes. She can find out what the churches are doing to help families review the PSAT Score reports that freshmen and sophomores brought home in January. She will call churches and document their responses.
This is the beginning of the second half of the first decade of the New Millennium. The decade does not have to end with the average black SAT test taker still receiving a score below the minimum required for Bright Futures Scholarships. Freshmen (members of the Class of 2009) who review and use the PSAT Score report can raise the average test score for black students before the end of the decade.
Our diamond in ZIP Code 33604 is a senior at Chamberlain High School. She will graduate in the top ten percent of her 439-member senior class. She will graduate with six Advanced Placement classes on her high school transcript. She has applied to four of the institutions on the US New List of America’s Best Colleges. Most admissions officers, if not all, will drool when they see her 640 Verbal (Critical Reading) and 660 Math SAT scores.
This Sunday afternoon around 3:30-ish, I will have an opportunity to “break pancakes” with our diamond at the Village Inn, 215 N. Dale Mabry, just north of Kennedy Blvd. Addressees are welcome to join us. We will celebrate (on behalf of the village) her accomplishments to date. We will also discuss her plans to prepare for law school and provide her a list of potential local cheerleaders in the legal profession. We will figure out how we can substitute “paper or plastic” with “a community development project” as we enter the second half of the decade.
In His Service,
Jason
Ms. Calandra Wise and Cleopatra Wise, Chamberlain High Class of 2006
